Let The Flames Begin ✓ | Mikey Way

Epilogue

I just want to give a massive thanks to everyone who has read and supported this story. I started this over a year ago, and so much has happened in the past year and I want to thank anyone who has stuck with me writing this until the very end, whether you've been reading this since I posted the first chapter, or tenth, or if you started it once this whole thing has been already published. I know updates weren't all that frequent so thank you for being patient. I love all of your comments and got really happy when I saw that people enjoyed this. I hope to write more soon and just thank you all for reading this and supporting it. Without you guys I would have given up so long ago. Thank you so much.

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*11 Years Later*

The memory remains just a tiny spark. 

It had been ten years since Mikey and I broke up.

Neither of us had wanted to, but we both knew that we had to. He was going off with Ray, Frank, Gerard and this other kid I had spoken to once to start a band. He was going back to New Jersey, and could easily be touring if they got where they wanted to. I was going to college in Connecticut, and even though we were going to be only two states away from each other, we couldn't deal with the distance.

The memory of high school seemed like such a small, insignificant part of my life in perspective. Out of the 28 years I've been living, 4 was nothing. Yet so much had changed in those four years. 

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I walked in the record shop, hearing the comforting chime of a bell when the door opened. "Hey!"

"Please tell me you have my coffee." Cassey groaned behind the counter. Despite it being the afternoon, she still wasn't fully awake. I handed her the drink, and I watched as she drank it as if her life depended on it. It probably did, and she seemed more awake in a matter of seconds. 

Cassey and I both went to college together. I spent a full four years getting my music and education degree, she tried to get a business degree but dropped out after two years. I moved into her apartment just outside of the city once I  graduated, and shortly I was offered a job as a high school band director and teacher in New Jersey, and that's how the two of us ended up here. While I spent my days yelling at bratty teenagers to practice their music and show up on time, Cassey founded and has managed a record store for the past five years. 

"Got any new music?" I jumped on the counter, swinging my legs like a child. 

She rolled her eyes. "How many times do I have to tell you to get your ass off my desk?" 

I scoffed. "Calm down, there aren't any customers. And besides, this isn't a desk. It's a-"

"Jesus Christ." She moaned. "Every day I keep praying your sass has gone away from high school, but it's still there."

I laughed. "That's what happens when you work at a high school. You never really leave."

The bell on the door chimed, and she shoved me off the counter, nearly causing me to collapse onto the floor. "That was rude."

"I told you to get off."

"Whatever, just hand over your new stuff."

"Fine." Her chair slid across the floor as she got up the grab a box from behind the counter. She set it next to me, as we began rummaging through it. 

"This is all shit." I moaned as I flipped through Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and countless other artists I tried my best to avoid listening to throughout my entire life.

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. These damn millennials keep requesting this, and while I'd much rather be selling Queen or the Beatles or your jazz crap or whatever mainstream punk bands people listen to today, if I have this shit it sells and I get money. I stock what my customers want to buy. I do have some other stuff in the back though. Mostly it's Fall Out Boy and stuff like that, some of it's pretty good. It's on the blue rack next to the 90s stuff."

I smiled. "Thanks Cassey."

"Wait!" She called. "Definitely check out the one in the very top left. It might make a good marching band show."

I nodded my head and walked to the back of the store to the blue rack. I let my eyes wander across the covers, but nothing really jumped out at me. I looked at the one in the top left and grabbed it. If Cassey recommended it, it surely couldn't be that bad. 

The Black Parade. I could definitely see why she would think it'd make a good show. I looked at the back, but I didn't recognize any of the songs. 

"That's a really good album."

I jumped, surprised at the sound of another person's voice behind me. I had forgotten that another customer walked in. I turned around, seeing a tall, skinny man with blonde hair, sunglasses, and a leather jacket."

"Uh, thanks, I haven't listened to it, my friend just recommended it to me and-" I froze when I looked back down at the record and read the artist's name. My Chemical Romance. I looked back up at the stranger. He took off his glasses, and there was no doubt in my mind that it was the man I had fallen in love with so many years ago. 

"Mikey?"

He gave that small half smile that made me go weak at the knees ten years ago, and was giving me butterflies in my stomach right now. "Didn't think you'd recognize me."

"How could I not?" I laughed.

We didn't say anything to each other for what seemed like an eternity. Ten years of not seeing each other and neither of us could think of anything to say. It should have been awkward and weird, but it wasn't. Just by looking at each other, in the middle of the record store, everything that we had left behind was falling back into place. I remembered how much I missed him, and I don't know how I went so long without having him in my life. The impulsive part in me wanted to do nothing more than grab his face and kiss him right then and there. But it had been so long, so much about him could have changed. He could be seeing someone. I was scared that he had changed into someone that he wasn't in high school. But something about the way he spoke when he broke the silence made me know that he was thinking the same thing I was and was longing to do the same thing the impulsive part of me was trying to control. 

"Do you think we could grab a coffee sometime, and catch up?"

I felt a small amount of heat rush into my cheeks. I shyly smiled, looking at the floor, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. "Yeah, I'd like that."

It's just a spark, but it's enough, to keep me going. 

The End. 

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